Oregon killing suspect: Murder's "interesting'

Steven A. Chin, OF THE EXAMINER STAFF

Published 4:00 am, Sunday, December 17, 1995

1995-12-17 04:00:00 PDT OREGON -- STOCKTON - The man charged with killing two Oregon women told The Examiner Saturday that "I don't care for lesbians," but said he didn't shoot Roxanne Ellis and Michelle Abdill because of their sexual orientation.

Robert James Acremant, 27, said in a jailhouse interview that he just got an urge to shoot the two businesswomen during a robbery - that it was just part of "the American way."

Dressed in a raspberry-red jumpsuit and shackled at the waist, Acremant appeared for the interview unshaven, saying that San Joaquin County Jail officials would not allow him to shave for fear he would attempt suicide.

Asked what he liked about murder, he said: "It's not a "like' feeling. It's maybe a little relieving. It's interesting.

"It's no different than shooting your chicken that just lost in a cockfight or putting your sick dog to sleep or shooting at tin cans," Acremant continued. "I really haven't cared about people my whole life."

He said the killings of Ellis, 54, and Abdill, 42, in Medford, Ore., on Dec. 4, and - before them - his friend Scott George in Visalia on Oct. 3 were the inevitable result of his frustration at not meeting his life's goal of being "happy," which meant being a rich man.

Though he earned a master's degree in business administration from Golden Gate University in San Francisco in half the time it normally takes, he said, his choice of a career in business turned out to be a mistake.

"Getting the business degree was a waste of time," he said. "There are too many business grads out there. If I had chosen another field, all this may not have happened."

In May, Acremant quit his $40,000-a-year job at Roadway Trucking in Los Angeles because he felt he wasn't going to get ahead. But "nobody would hire me," he added. "I still don't understand it."

Frustrated by his failure to find a job that would help him achieve financial security and depressed over recent rejection by a girlfriend - a Las Vegas stripper - he said he began to explore his darker side.

Already, in the last year he had become a heavy drinker.

"Sometimes when I drink, I get angry," he said. "That anger comes out."

But, until now, Acremant said, he had been able to keep his anger in check.

"I was always holding in my anger as long as I can remember, even as a kid, but as a kid you could never do much," he said. "I guess I've always felt that when someone pissed me off, that deep inside I could shoot them."

Acremant began reading up on guns, bombs, surveillance techniques, and even how to manufacture drugs such as methamphetamines, as a way of making his fortune. Robbery, he said, was another alternative.

"I'd always wondered if I ever got into a bind, what I would do to get money. As long as I owned a gun, there was my insurance policy," he said. "But even if I didn't have it, I could still do it (kill). There are other means. You don't need a gun. Guns are just nice, an extension, to get distance between you and the other person."

He said that he used to tell his Air Force buddies: " "If I ever get desperate I could always go shoot people and just take what they got. It's the American way.' I'm just one of the Americans who didn't make it doing that," he said.

"It's what this country is built on, taking from others. I tried my best. It just wasn't meant to be. Guess it's just fate."

Lack of money became a "major stresser" that eventually led him to kill, he said. After dating for two months, he had split up with his girlfriend because he didn't have enough money to visit her in Las Vegas.

"It couldn't work because she liked living like the upper class," he said. "I stopped going to see her when I ran out of money and it slowly fell apart."

Acremant said the killing started after a night of drinking with Scott George.

Acremant was driving:

"George didn't piss me off. I had my gun on the right side of the seat. . . . I just picked it up and shot him in the back of the head.

"I had just built a silencer for my handgun, so - maybe it was a way to test it out. I don't know," he said, laughing. "The next day I was regretting having to clean up all that s- - and disposing of him.

"I'd always wondered what it would be like to kill somebody, whether it was this incredible thing," Acremant said. "It ain't. It was like pow! . . . nothing."

He wouldn't say how he disposed of the body. Visalia police still are treating George's disappearance as a missing person case, spokesman Mike Correia said.

Acremant, who is accused of murdering Ellis and Abdill in Medford, waived his right to an extradition hearing Friday and will be returned to Oregon. He was arrested Wednesday in Stockton - where his parents live - after a three-day manhunt.

Acremant said he never planned ahead of time to kill the two Oregon women. He said he wanted to rob a property management firm by arranging to see a townhouse and then taking money from the owner.

When the first company sent an employee rather than the owner, he tried a second firm - reaching Ellis.

After meeting Ellis at a townhouse and eventually luring Abdill there, he plotted to move both women to another location to avoid being tracked down.

It wasn't until he forced them to lie in the back of their pickup truck that he felt like shooting them in the back of the head.

"All of a sudden I just looked down and had that feeling," he said. "It was definitely an urge. I didn't think about it, not even a moment."

Acremant denied killing Ellis and Abdill, gay rights activists who lived and worked together, because they were lesbians.

"I couldn't help but think that she's 54 years old and had been dating that woman for 12 years; isn't that sick?" he added. "That's someone's grandma, for God sake. Could you imagine my grandma a lesbian with another woman? I couldn't believe that. It crossed my mind a couple of times - lesbo grandma, what a thing, huh?"

However, he said homophobia didn't make him pull the trigger of his pistol.

"It wasn't the motivator," he said.

Acremant could face the death penalty if convicted in the Oregon killings. He said he hoped to be executed.&lt;

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